This invention relates to a chemical decontamination facility and method, and more particularly to a self-contained chemical decontamination facility and method for use with, or as part of, emergency rooms in hospitals.
The chemical accident which occurred in Bhopal, India on Dec. 3, 1984 killed more than 2,000 people and injured 200,000. As a result of that accident, there has been increased interest in the state of preparedness of medical facilities in this country and elsewhere to meet an emergency of that magnitute.
A recent study involving 44 major hospitals in a major metropolitan area having a substantial number of chemical processing and production plants revealed that more than half the hospitals had no formal treatment methods for emergencies from accidents in chemical plants.
Aside from the question of having adequately trained personnel to meet such a contingency, it was found that there was little or no special facilities within or associated with the emergency room to handle even relatively small disasters of this type, let alone any emergency from a major chemical plant disaster.
As a result of the Bhopal tragedy, efforts have been made to increase the capability of hospital emergency rooms to meet chemical disasters. For example, some hospitals have been installing in their emergency rooms sophisticated electronic equipment, such as a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer to aid in identifying the nature and degree of the contamination, deluge showers to remove surface contaminating materials, and triage rooms to evaluate the patients being brought in under the emergency conditions.
While the steps taken as described above reflect movement in the right direction, what has been done up to now and has been contemplated falls far short of what is needed in the event of an actual emergency. A difficult problem to deal with is how to avoid secondary contamination of the hospital facilities, particularly the emergency room, when the hospital is overwhelmed with large numbers of persons suffering from contamination in a disaster, and, typically without adequate knowledge of the nature of the contamination when the first patients are brought into the emergency room.